Plants that did well this year

Brenda mentioned starting a thread for successes of the summer. So, here it is! My lavender did very well. Daylilies were good and I was surprised when some new ones bloomed their first year. Basil in pots, very happy even now. Marigolds and cosmos in pots looking good. Bachelor's buttons were very jolly. Papyrus had lots of babies. Coleus in pots did well. Echinacea had a good year. Cactus and sedums in ground or pots, happy. Tulips, early on, not bad. What else?

Iris did great at my house and so did sedums and delosperma. My hydrangea Annabelle did fabulously. It had 3 huge white flowers when the big hail storm came. They were badly damaged and so were the leaves, but the bush has now put out new leaves and flowers and is still in bloom. That means it was in bloom most of the summer.
My new little rhododendron bloomed beautifully also. My columbines and oriental poppies did great as well.
And my two daturas from the Denver Botanic garden are covered with huge beautiful blooms.
And my little quince tree has 3 nice size quinces on it.

iris, sedums, coreopsis all did great as did all but one of the many shrubs I planted.

Lots of things did well here. My Cistus look happy, various Oreganos are growing, Veronica is taking hold and growing. The Salvia azurea is doing fantastic as are the Agastaches. I have a few Erisimums that have now tripled in size. The Lavender is doing nicely and flowered for months. The cuttings I took (because I couldn't get more of the same variety that over-Wintered well from last year) rooted and are planted. The Mint and Columbines by my front door have done great. I've had to cut the mint back twice and the Columbines have produced babies. Most of my Sedums have expanded. The birds decided one of them was quite tasty in the Spring, but it recovered and flowered anyway. The Rosemary have grown to about a foot high as have the Ceanothus I planted over the back fence. Its been a good year for plants. Only reluctance I have saying "these have done well" is that many of them haven't seen Winter yet.

Pie cherry did great this year, 2 quarts for me and a quart for the birds and it's only it's third year here. Salvia daghestanica is back from the presumed dead and the brown-eyed susans are doing better than I would like. The tomatoes that escaped the hordes of pill bugs are producing very nicely.

Forgot the back yard. My Acorn Squash is doing great - squashes as big as a small head.

The weeds are also growing well. I've pulled 18,362 of them this year.

LOL, dparsons! I have lots to say about what did well this year (and I must put it all down in my Garden Journal), but alas, it is too late in the evening now, and we are back on the road tomorrow morning. I will add some thoughts and pics as time and internet access allow...

I figure if it is still hanging in there then it is a success. I am more critical with the edibles though, they need to produce. My list is too long but some stand-outs are...

Viburnum 'Alleghany', heucheras, Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, Origanum 'Norton's Gold', agastaches, Sweet Woodruff, Yucca 'Color Guard', Coreopsis 'Moonbeam', panicums, Gazania 'Colorado Gold', amaranths, bronze fennel, achillea, pennisetums, tanacetum, Sambucus 'Eva', penstemons, Campanula 'Pink Octopus', sedums, butterfly bush, Echinacea pallida, Caryopteris 'Dark Knight', Mirabilis multiflora.

These all are very water-wise, some do need shade though.

This was a stellar year in my garden for all my old standbys thanks to the little weekly rain showers and sunny sun. Some standouts that I'm very excited about (well more than usual cuz I'm always very excited about everything) are:

Hydrangea paniculata 'Pink Diamond' which I just put in last fall and it has flowers and is growing, growing, growing
Daylilys - my new 'Dippy Day Lilys' song worked. Some that never flower were repeat bloomers this summer
echinocystis lobata (wild cucumber vine)
siberian iris

I am delighted to hear that hydrangea Pink Diamond bloomed. I was thinking I might order it, now I will for sure. I have two that haven't done much -- Endless Summer and Penny Mac. They are alive but haven't bloomed. I am going to try moving them near hydrangea Annabelle which blooms its head off. I have also heard that hydrangea Limelight does well in the Rockies. Has anyone tried it?

Paj I call 'Endless Summer' 'Ends in Summer'. Doesn't do well here. "Limelight' looks luvly. The next one I'm getting when we riiiiiiiip out the driveway is 'Quickfire'. My friend Chef Pam has it and luvs it.

Oh, good to hear, dahlia. I am interested in any hydrangea that works in the Rockies and especially in Calgary -- it is a lot colder there than here. I really want limelight, but I don't want to be the first to try it. I am going to ask around before I buy it. I have too many that survive but don't bloom. Annabelle, however blooms magnificently.

Pie cherries did well for us, too, Katlian. D.H. has lists, says he picked 30 lbs. That's before they were pitted. Agastache Neo Mexicana over-wintered from last year and did well so I planted more of it. Mahonia had a happy year and got very big threatening passers by on the sidewalk. D.H. made jelly from the berries, just a pint. They make their own pectin and taste great with tons of sugar. We also had currants and serviceberries. The pattern I'm seeing here is that the natives put up with the bad weather better than the rest. They ought to!

I think pie cherries do better here than other stone fruits because they bloom later and mature earlier so there are few chances of frost damage. That's one of the reasons I chose a pie cherry. Another is that I had a lovely slice of cherry pie for breakfast :)

Very interesting about the mahonia berries. I have a tiny mahonia this year but someday maybe it will have berries. I have wild currents but they taste like cardboard, but maybe they would taste better with sugar. Mine are yellow. Are yours red? That could be the difference. I have never grown service berries, but that might be a good one for the vacant lot if I can keep the deer out of them.
I did get lots of peaches. They were very tiny but sweet. I am afraid their small size is due to the fact that the poor tree is growin in only about 6 inches of soil. I mulch it well and give it manure and alfalfa pellets and water, but probably could give it more water as well. This year I picked the peaches early enough that the birds only got about half of them. I let them sit on the cabinet for a couple of weeks and now they are yummy.
No cherries, no apricots. The pears were mostly ruined by the hail and fell off. But the quince tree still has its 3 quinces. I am hoping for more next year.
The plum and crabapples are still not old enough to bear, and neither are the apples. But maybe next year. It took forever for the pears to bear.

My cherry trees aren't doing all that great. Maybe I need to place at least one with a pie cherry.

The pie cherries are on the north side of our house. They are big enough to get sun over the fence. Their feet are always in shade. They tend to bloom later than everything else. They could probably stand some stinky mulch this fall. All of our fruit trees were here when bought the house in 1990. They were all bearing fruit then. Don't know when they were planted. We lost a couple of peach trees right off the bat when our neighbor at the time used some noxious chemicals to kill elms right next to our fruit trees. It damaged the apricot near by and plain murdered the peaches. That was on the south side of the house next to the driveway. The currant bushes and service berry and mahonia are all natives planted by us. The currants are yellow and red ones. Native fruit is generally seedier and not as big as we think fruit ought to be. Often it is more tart and more flavorful. The plants seem to have fewer diseases and requires less water, etc.

Tiger Eyes Sumac
Yellowhorn
These two grew like nobody's business. Will post more later.

Lavender! I am so beyond thrilled it did well and even is blooming still! Yay whoopti do!!!!!

And there is actually a birch seedling that got bird-sown I expect, and then deer-dug-up I am certain cause of hoofprints, that I decided to move into a pot and nurture along for future planting in more appropriate location.

One morning I went out and all the leaves were crispy critters. Tears of disappointment gathered.

Being a sloppy and lazy gardener, I left the pot with crispy failure display just sitting there for a week.

Then one day I glanced at it and, LO! Two, no three! little fresh green leaves leafing out just all normal and healthy.

I like it when it happens like that, nature snatching life from the jaws of gardening defeat.

Also, there is a native violet with yellow flowers I dug up and planted in the garden that I thought had died but then discovered it had revived.

I have yet to catch it in bloom, been waiting for a picture moment, but since this thread is here decided to just tell it.

I had felt so guilty that I had greedily dug it up and moved it! It had a terribly long and deep taproot that I did break off before getting it all out and so. When it revived I did celebrate. I see little seed pods opened and I see buds but have not yet caught a flower to share. Still, it's there.

A yellow violet! I have heard of them but never seen one in the flesh. I have 4 colors now, purple, white and purple and white together, and now the pink ones from roybird. Maybe someday, I will come across a yellow one. Congratulations on finding a yellow one. They aren't common in my part of the planet.

Are you sure they are not? There are apparently many varieties of yellow violets...... wild ones...... Yellow seems to be the main color of choice for wild flowers, pink and white not quite as much and anything else is a treat.

In the spring I always see yellow first, in the landscape.....

Violet seeds are hard to catch but maybe I can send you some. ;-)

I have never seen yellow violets, wild or tame in New Mexico. I think I would have noticed if they were around. So, yes, if you were able to catch some yellow violet seeds, I would be thrilled to receive them and might fire up my trusty grow light to germinate them early next spring.
Why I haven't seen them , I cannot guess, but I would love to get the chance. Yes, violets are invasive, but here in New Mexico, at least, they have their place.
As I have said so often, many of my garden favorites are invasive because that what is grows here.

Yes, okay. This one is not likely invasive, there was only one plant and a tiny offshoot out in the brush back there. I admit I took the larger plant, hoping for viability. The offshoot did survive my surgery! and the transplant did also. Gosh I hope I can catch both some seeds and also a picture of the flowers!

It is a kind of leathery leaved violet, almost succulent like leaves, and the flowers are pretty teeny, but definitely a violet.

Well, heck, that's good enough. If you can get some seeds I would love them!

I will do my best for you on that.

Thanks, I will appreciate your efforts whether successful or not.

If they are not successful I shall make sure to tell you about them so that you can appreciate them even in the absence of the evidence of success.

if you wonder if I am getting silly, you are on the right track, interpretive-wise.

Silly is good, most of the time.

Iris bloomed like crazy, evn got a rebloom on Beverly Sills in August. Oriental Lilies were spectacular, daylilies above average, and anything in the mint family went hog wild, including the thyme and Hopleys oregano.

Dahlias -- only the purple ones survived (planted early may), first bloom on the roses was spectacular but almost no rebloom later in the season, holloyhocks are Reaally nice, ornamental grasses ditto. And everything is going to seed 3-4 weeks early.

I was surprised that our currant bushes went in to "fall mode" in mid-August. Very early for them. They have dropped most of their leaves already. The Virginia Creeper has red leaves and blue berries now and the New Mexico sunflowers are still not blooming. They usually happen at the same time. The plumbago is blooming well, though it seems late. Greenjay, my roses behaved just as yours did. They did have a gorgeous first bloom, though. The lavender re-bloomed two or three times, which it generally does not. Winter savory is going nuts.

I am amazed that you could get rebloom out of Beverly Sills, GreenJay, most people have trouble getting it to bloom the first time. And your oriental lilies grew well. I am astounded. I have not been able to get them to bloom more than one year, on the whole. It must be all that compost.
I have had good luck with Asiatic lilies year after year, though.

My info here is just from one year, so nothing to compare it to, but I do hear from all over that cycles are shifted somehow, with bloom times and seed time and weather......

I was offline all yesterday due to a service outage they had a hard time locating but all is back now thank goodness.

Pajarito, here is a photo of that little violet we were talking about. You can see it is a violet, and you can see an open seed pod, and some buds..... I do hope to catch it in bloom for a picture one day!

Ah, yes, nice little violet and it does appear that it will bloom yellow. Hopefully you will get a photo -- and eventually some seed.

Well, I was busy picking and canning this weekend. 5 quarts of tomatoes, 4 of plums, and a couple dozen jars of jam (and two loaves of bread to taste them on.)

The Jaune Flammee tomatoes did ok but the leaves were attacked by some sort of fungus. It looked exactly like alternaria leaf spot but it was the wrong time of year and weather for it. Blight also affected the Sungold nearby, which never got very big but had a fair yield of tasty little fruits.

OSU Blue experimental tomatoes did quite well and will probably make good salsa. They were touching the Jaune Flammees and showed no sign of blight.

Big Rainbow only had a few large fruits and they are not very tasty.

Legend was compact and not affected by blight. Lots of big beautiful tomatoes on these plants. Bought at the nursesry to replace seedling eaten by pill bugs. Also bought Thesaloniki (medium yield, lots of cracking) and Siberian (poor yield, heavily disfigured fruits.)

Garden Peach has been very slow and the fruits may not ripen before frost.

Black Plum had an enormous crop from the lone survivor of the pill bug attacks. We will have plenty of sauce for the winter.

Cherokee Purple has been very slow and has ugly, cracked, sunburned fruits.

That's all for now, time to eat that bread!

drooooooooooooool

Oh, your tomatoes look soooo good! Tomorrow I will take some pics, read some plant tags, and share what our successes have been (though that also requires really looking at the 'non-successes')... I will say that my favorite flowering plant this year has been my hydrangeas, something I never could have grown in AZ and my two have been blooming all summer. Fantastic!

This message was edited Sep 14, 2009 12:27 AM

katlian, what a wonderful bunch of canning and gardening you have done! Canned tomatoes, plums and jam. What bounty! As for the tomatoes, it is amazing how tomato variety successes vary as we move through the Rockies. The important thing is to keep track of which tomatoes worked for you in your combination of soil and climate. Then repeat the successes and don't repeat the failures and perhaps do a little experimentation as well.

Bsavage,
What hydrangea are you growing so successfully! I have been trying to find hardy western hydrangeas for quite a while now. So far my one and only true success has been Annabelle, though I hope to try some others.

Nice, Katlian! Showed your post to D.H., who was happily impressed. He's the "canner" here.

Paj I'm in luv with my 'Pink Diamond' that I put in last fall. Although still little it's healthy and flowering. http://www.northscaping.com/Tools/LPS-Engine.asp?CCID=10000000&page=pdp&PID=836

That color change is pretty cool, Dahlia.

Since DH is the primary tomato eater and cooker around here he is in charge of selecting the best specimens for saving seeds. I like to use about 3/4 known favorites and 1/4 experimental tomatoes but this year the ratio was thrown off by the darned pill bugs and the nursery didn't have some of our favorites to replace the chewed ones.

I realized that the ugliest red tomatoes were at the top of the large bowl because I picked them last. The gorgeous Legends were at the bottom!